After 3 years in the freezer, my last witch from French Guiana, 2015, is mounted. My motive: when the wings of a mounted moth have dried, a critical detail is obscured. Working with the frozen specimen, I can view the frenulum, a structure that connects hind and forewings. Male moths have a single strong bristle, females have multiple smaller bristles (info here). The closeup photo below shows the stout single bristle of a male.
For nearly all of the 200+ records I have, sex is unknown. It would be enormously helpful if observers could ascertain the sex of moths encountered. This would be easy to do: white witches are most often observed in the day time, stationary on trees. It should be simple and minimally disruptive to the moth to flip it over and examine the wings, from the ventral side.
For nearly all of the 200+ records I have, sex is unknown. It would be enormously helpful if observers could ascertain the sex of moths encountered. This would be easy to do: white witches are most often observed in the day time, stationary on trees. It should be simple and minimally disruptive to the moth to flip it over and examine the wings, from the ventral side.